For Lack of a Better Plan
by gveret
Summary: Azula buys Ty Lee a rose and then doesn't give it to her. Ty Lee climbs a tree outside Azula's house and falls asleep in it. Their anniversary, like everything else of theirs, turns out somewhat unconventional.


Well, today is a Tuesday, and also Ty Lee and Azula's first anniversary, apparently.

It's incredibly distressing, if not wholly unexpected, that Azula finds out about this evidently most significant of occasions from Suki, of all people. As if she wouldn't rather be assaulted by an entire pride of river lions during a solar eclipse while wearing her old straightjacket and also getting pummeled about the head by her brother's compulsive nicknamer friend and her creatively shaped clumps of dirt.

But obviously this isn't a matter of preference, and so, instead of her brain being squished like a bowlful of old pudding while her fashionably clad body is ripped to royal blooded shreds, Azula is subjected to a mildly worded letter threatening her with family get-togethers if she fails to properly celebrate the one full year of dysfunctional bliss she and Ty Lee have apparently managed to share.

A less intimidating threat would be hard to imagine, of course, since any kind of social gathering with Azula in it would be just as objectionable to Suki as it is to Azula herself; and either way Suki has no authority over her whatsoever because Azula is an Agni-damned _adult_, who has a job and takes her pills and everything. Society is lucky to have her, quite frankly.

So it is without a doubt strictly out of love and devotion that Azula decides she might as well grant Ty Lee the great privilege of an early morning anniversary smooch.

Quite tragically, however, Ty Lee isn't home. Her hours with the Warriors have been somewhat unpredictable lately. It might have something to do with the recent trouble in the southern islands, although Ty Lee has been reluctant to discuss it. The Kiyoshi Warriors do like to maintain an air of secrecy to prop their self-importance, after all.

Azula hangs around hopefully outside Ty Lee's front door a while longer, just in case, occasionally squinting furtively over her shoulder to make sure there are no witnesses to this. There aren't, but there's also no Ty Lee.

Eventually she has to leave to go to her own work, but Azula has a feeling this will not be the last of her acting like someone's lost lamb-puppy today.

.

Eleven hours later, Azula leaves the fire department. It's not until she passes by a man selling bunches of decapitated vegetation and shouting about "a Beaumontia for your beau! A Bellevalia for your belle! Only four coppers apiece!" that she remembers why painful puns do not seem so terribly out of place today.

"Give me something girls like," she tells him.

He smiles gloriously and she suddenly has a feeling he gets asked that a lot. She grimaces at him and walks away with a single flower the color she assumes the lifeblood shed from his freshly slit throat would be. He shouts at her to have a lovely day.

.

Ty Lee still isn't home. She isn't at any of her favorite teashops, either. The open market is starkly devoid of disgustingly cheerful professional warriors with a propensity to use their hands for transportation more often than their feet.

The rose stem in Azula's hand is becoming slick with sweat, the curved thorns slipping against her palm. The sun has set long ago and the awful, humid Earth Kingdom night is setting in. Passersby around her use their voices very loudly and to far too cheerful ends. Azula steps in an ankle-deep puddle of mud.

"_Rrrgh!_"

There's a surge of beautiful, beautiful heat in and around Azula, and when she finally exhales and unclenches her fist, the smoking, crumbling remains of the formerly red rose tumble out of it in a pitiful little cascade of thoroughly incinerated sentimentality. She wipes her hand on her pants.

That's it. Azula is going home, to have a lukewarm shower and eat some kind of steamed root and go to fucking sleep already. Let the family dinner invitations come! They are no match to her incandescent outrage, and Azula has several cranky messenger hawks at her disposal. More than several, in fact; _all_ the messenger hawks at the local post office are perpetually cranky.

That is just what happens when you bring Fire Nation-born things to the Earth Kingdom, evidently.

.

There's a foot dangling down a branch of one of Azula's plum-cherry trees. The foot is bare, and it is attached to one half of a pair of ceremoniously-garbed legs, and that is attached to –

"Ty Lee?" Azula has to squint to make sure she is not just imagining things, but even in the dark there's no mistaking the Kiyoshi Warriors' face paint, and even in Kiyoshi Warriors face paint there is no mistaking Ty Lee. "What are you doing up there!"

Ty Lee slowly opens her eyes, blinks, and immediately covers them with the crook of her arm and scowls around her elbow. "Well, I _had _been sleeping," she grumbles. "Now I am waking up. Grumpily."

Azula glares up at the little green bundle of obvious irritation lounging in her tree. "This is ridiculous," she states. "Ty Lee, _why_ are you waking up in my tree?"

Ty Lee peeks at her with one eye and deepens her scowl. "C'mon," she says, "just come up here already."

Climbing the stupid plum-cherry tree is much more frustrating than Azula had assumed, despite the fact that Azula always assumes climbing stupid plum-cherry trees for frivolous reasons to be very greatly frustrating on principle. The bark is too smooth, the branches too high, and she has definitely pulled something in her right leg.

Finally reaching Ty Lee's perch, Azula pulls herself up opposite her and sits down, hands gripping the branch in front of her and her legs swinging below. She does not feel terribly elegant.

Ty Lee, on the other hand, is lying fully down, only her head propped up against the trunk and her folded arms, bent knee and twisted lips seemingly arranged for maximum surly effect.

She sniffs. "You stink," she says.

"So do you. What have you been doing all day? Synchronized tree-climbing?"

Ty Lee reaches out, laces her fingers in Azula's and places their interlocked hands on her stomach. "I missed you."

"That's your own fault," Azula tells her. "I've been looking for you all day."

"Then you weren't doing a very good job," Ty Lee replies mildly. "I was right here."

"Yes, well." Azula doesn't squirm much, really. "Happy anniversary, I suppose."

"It's our anniversary?"

"Yes."

"Okay."

Azula eyes her doubtfully. "You didn't know about this?" she asks. "I thought that might be why you were in this tree."

"Why would our anniversary be a reason for me to be in a tree?"

"I don't know, Ty Lee. I do not presume to understand you." She huffs. "Why _are_ you in a tree?"

Ty Lee shrugs. It's a rather awkward gesture to make in her current position, lying on her back on a branch in a tree. "I was waiting for you," she says simply.

Azula stares at her. Ty Lee's hair is about as disorganized as it can get while staying bound in a braid and she hasn't yet deigned to open her eyes all the way, and even the dark circles beneath them aren't enough to diminish Azula's annoyance at Ty Lee's blatant disregard for her royal presence. Yet she still feels a very distinct desire to see Ty Lee smile.

"I bought you some kind of flower. It supposedly signifies something romantic or other."

"Where is it, then?"

"I burned it."

The expression on Ty Lee's face is one of those things that Azula has been learning to notice about her; those things that, had she noticed them back when they were teenagers, would have made her very angry. But she never noticed them back then, couldn't have noticed them back then, and these days, the wry little twist to Ty Lee's lips which tells her that Ty Lee understands there are things about Azula to be mocked, that she would be willing and capable of mocking them, and that she is granting Azula permission to be mock-worthy, only makes her feel relieved.

And on second thought, she thinks, that is in fact quite horrifying.

Then Ty Lee laughs loudly, and Azula knows it's at her expense, and Azula doesn't care.

"Let's just cuddle," Ty Lee says.

Cuddling in a tree is not the most comfortable of things. It might even be the absolute _least_ comfortable of things, actually. But despite the rude little nub of tree digging into her back and the fact that Ty Lee is significantly taller than her nowadays, and so having her in Azula's lap means getting a faceful of Ty Lee's chaotic hair (which is also badly in need of a wash, as it happens), it is, in Azula's opinion, not remotely the most terrible way of spending an anniversary, either.

"If Suki asks, I was an exemplary girlfriend today."

Ty Lee snorts. "If Suki asks, I'll just tell her we fucked like hedgehog-bunnies all day."

Azula coughs feebly into Ty Lee's hair.

"I've never fucked anyone in a tree, I think," Ty Lee continues, an alarmingly pensive quality to her voice. "Could be fun."

Azula sighs loudly. "Ty Lee." She gives her a slight squeeze and Ty Lee rests her head back against her shoulder. "Let's just cuddle."


End file.
